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Sunday, January 29, 2006

So, it seems to work! (Edited)

First of all, today is the first day of the Year of the Dog according to the Chinese calendar (how many 'the's have I used? hahaha ... ), I'd like to wish you all a wonderful Dog year ahead.

Then, there is good news and bad news. Good news first. About the Lace Leaf Pullover, I've come to the stage of fitting the sleeve into the upper body. The re-calculation of stitches to fit my gauge works! In fact, I don't know whether it is the pattern, or that I measured my own gauge very correctly this time, the finished measurements of this project have been the most accurate I have done so far. Every bit is as predicted. And the raglan fits very well:

I think I'll write about this when I write the FO post. But as you can see, my stitches are not that even there just under the leaves. That happened when I am knitting back and forth. Now I get to understand the beauty of knitting in the round! I think blocking would be able to ease out the unevenness. I just finished one sleeve to see if the shoulder and raglan fit.

Now the bad news. I am short of yarn for exactly one sleeve cap (6" raglan)! I have been contemplating the possibilities of various solutions:

1) Shortening the length of the sleeves by at least 1" ... which might, or might not, save enough yarns to finish the project. Besides, for a bulky pullover like this one, it feels right and better to have the sleeves extending into the hands.

2) Making the other sleeve obviously shorter ... and tell everybody that this is a Teva Durham design, so it's got to be a bit funky. But I'm not sure if I would love wearing the pullover when it's done.

3) Looking for an extra ball of Kool Wool in Eggplant dye lot 0100. As some of you may know, this yarn is already discontinued. Smiley's is out of the colour Eggplant. Perhaps the only place I would get lucky is eBay.

If you were me, what would you do?

**As of 5:50 p.m. today, I found a seller carrying the yarn in the SAME dyelot! Quite a good start for the Year of the Dog, I have to say! ;) And a huge thank you to all of you who were so enthusiastic in offering your suggestion, well wishes and help. I think Lace Leaf will make its debut very soon.

Gung Hee Fat Choy and Happy Year of the Dog to you! Your Lace Leaf is looking beautiful!! That's such a bummer about not having enough yarn, though. I cracked up at your suggestion of telling everyone that it's a Teva Durham design to justify the one sleeve shorter than the other bit, lol! ;-) I agree with everyone above...perhaps Ebay or another store that carries Kool Wool will have that same dye lot. Maybe posting on some forum would help, too- knitters are so willing to help each other out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you! Take care! :-)

I was going to vote for having one sleeve shorter than the other. :-) But since you don't have to do that after all, don't speak about about assymetrical sleeves too much. You don't want to be giving Teva any ideas.

On the uneven stitches in the back and forth knitting, its called "rowing out" and I have a bad, bad problem with this. I purl much looser than I knit. You might also have this issue, or reversed with your knits looser than your purls. In my experience, serious rowing out WON'T block out, even in wool, Lately I have taken to using a smaller needle to do my purl rows, usually one size smaller than that which I use for knit rows. Some folks with this issue have had success switching to combined knitting (a la Annie Modesitt's method) for the back and forth rows.